As in my previous post you will see that I decided to brave travelling to the venue and left the house at 4.45am and met up with two friends Erin -Merin&co and Haylee – MyHappyEverAfter in London Euston. We made our way to the event at Huckletree not knowing what to expect. I have to say that I know I have nothing to compare this event to as it’s my first one, but I was really inspired, motivated and silghtly overwhelmed about when I would get all of their recommendations into fruition!
Canon
First up for our group was a chance to meet up with the people from Canon and ask them any questions regarding photography and filming. I was looking forward to asking a few question as I have just invested in a Canon G7X mark 2 camera and as my camera skills only extend to an iPhone or a disposable camera any tips were greatly received. The gentleman answered my questions but unfortunately due to information overload from the whole day I didn’t retain this information very well as it was the first part of the day. I did take with me the ideas to utilise all the Canon apps more, such as canon Companion, Canon Connect, Lifecake and Irista for photo storage. I will when I get time utilise some of the tutorials on how to access more on my camera. If in doubt he reassured me it’s great to just use Auto rather than manual settings.
Next up was the hilarious Whitney Rosenthal – such a great personality and really kept me engaged throughout her presentation. This was possibly of the most interest to me as I do love Instagram, but have found it frustrating recently with the new algorithm. I gained some top tips:
- Video is the way forward – Putting video onto your daily feed rather than just sticking with photography; it stands out to your existing followers and grabs new followers.
- Go square – videos that are square have a better layout for viewing.
- Multiple pics – Change it up and do square and landscape together on your multi-swipe photo function.
- Interactive is key – so on Insta stories go mad with the stickers, drawing and # your stories with names and brands and don’t forget to utilise geotagging where possible. If you add a location into your stories they’re so much more likely to be accessed when other users are viewing this location. Make stickers jazz-up more mundane Insta story days.
- They’re adding more and more functions such as superzoom so use it and have fun with it!
- Go Live – Whenever possible go live and show your audience what you’re doing, as going live helps push your chance of viewing through their stats. Instagram loves users that want to use video functions.
- Authenticity – Staying true to yourself rather than changing yourself for brands. Users will see through this and immediately unfollow if they’re not seeing the true you. Yes a pretty Insta grid is always going to attract new followers, but there has to be some real life relatable content in there, so if you’re still wanting to keep your very white grid Insta perfect then change it up with Insta stories and live video that proves you’re not that perfect as no one ever is!
- A pretty obvious one but easy to forget; the first 3 seconds of footage is the most important and keep that footage short, sweet and engaging.
- Save posts and you can access who else has saved posts which is useful for engagement.
- Appeal to the many people who absorb audio and visual images. We were shown footage of someone stirring up a simple bowl of slime and the video was attractive visually and quite mesmerising; add to this simple noises that you would associate with your footage and the post is going to perform and hit those top videos.
- Collaborate with others and @ mention them in feed and Stories. Again an obvious one, but it widens your audience from both sides and engages people and forms connections – ‘Show off your squad’ which leads me on to the next point
- Kindness – Instagram wants to promote positivity and kindness. Yes there will always be haters but look to blocking and filtering comment functions in this case. In the public argument between Kim K and Taylor Swift the snake emoji took over Taylor’s feed so this function first came in to play then and that emoji was blocked from her feed. Now we can all access these tools if need be, especially on branded content.
- Lastly one point I particularly liked was that fans had a different meaning now and they have the input on content, so ask opinions on products and daily decisions as this is great engagement.
She also answered some common myths about Instagram since leaving behind being chronological. It seems really there are so many stats involved in getting your posts noticed and that many rumours as to how your posts perform that are just myths. I just took from this that I don’t want to focus too much time on stressing on my posts’ performance as this is then adding to more stressing about numbers.
Mumsnet Influencers advice.
Some top tips for working on campaigns from the Mumset team that include some good basics.
Don’t be rude – Mumsnet Team remember the impolite influencers big or small. Spelling and Grammar on your blog needs to be correct as straight away you won’t be a good fit to promote anything. Site design and navigation – Having a search bar function, easy to view icons for social media and an easy to find contacts page. Pitching – You need to include your stats and you can gauge these from looking at engagement levels, comments, page views, examples of work and how you achieved the objectives given, watch time of videos and you could always throw in some footage to grab attention to your pitch. I do find all of this a little overwhelming as a newbie, but I know that I can start to work through all these tick lists methodically and that it’s a growing process. I can look at the stats / skills that I am performing well on and utilise them and then work on all the rest over time to bring them up.
The very motivated Marie Evans and Cat Davies spoke from Our X agency
Facebook can be a hard nut to crack and a bit of an unknown as to what to do with it, so I was looking for some tips as to where to go with this platform.
Facebook is all about building communities and groups so if you can look at being involved in a group then you’re really contributing. Engage with active members and lurkers in groups.
Post less and resonate – A good quality post once a week is more advantageous than daily less quality postings
Snippets of your YouTube video that showcase only a few seconds rather than posting whole blogs to the page, giving viewers channel teasers and getting your posts out to a wider audience.
Facebook Watch is the next big thing after being rolled out in the States – firsthand the advice was that the early users of this will get noticed more.
Hannah Martin- Talented Ladies Club
A very inspiring business workshop filled with good sound knowledge on building up your blog and channel mixed in with a refreshing look on promoting self belief and goal setting.
You are a business! Don’t use words that belittle what you’re doing such as “just” “only” “little” your blog is not a just/only/ little. Set goals – 3 Year Plan, 1year plan, months and chunk it out backwards to now. Imagine how you can play out your perfect day in your head from start to finish; how you feel, how you celebrate the perfect accomplishments you’ve achieved and focus on this vision as a goal. Brand Essence – Personality and how you look, sound, grow and evolve. Write down 30 words that describe your brand and take away 10, another 10, another 7 and leave 3 this is your focus. Focus on you and your brand, if you’re constantly looking around and comparing your brand to others then you’re not going to be focusing on you and performing as well. This also comes with resilience and a good work ethic, so not giving up as it is hard work is key to succeeding.
Importantly for you as a business you need to have the same recognisable logo across all your platforms; a professional media pack that showcases who you are, plays on your strengths, examples of recent work and also one to think on is to work on your elevator pitch as this helps focus you on your brand.
Hannah discussed the business nitty gritty in great length, which was so useful to go through the business basics that I need to focus on and especially beneficial to be reiterated to a newbie like myself. Lastly, she gave sound advice about chasing invoices and to make sure from your invoices and terms and conditions that payment is clear to both parties and to be persistent in collecting late payments and enforce charges.
Me and Orla
This for me was one of the highlights of the day and Sarah resonated well with me.
I wasn’t familiar with Sarah Tasker until today and I came away feeling inspired by her personal story of leaving behind the NHS to pursue a passion in photography, writing, creativity and as a promoter of self belief. All I can say is go and check out her Instagram feed @meandorla and visit her site as you won’t be disappointed. For me I love a feed with beautiful, intriguing photography. I was also interested and surprised to hear about the rise in podcast use and this is an area I’m wanting to explore more of alongside Pinterest, oh and yes all of the above I have learnt! Now all I need to achieve my main goal to leave my childcare career behind is to give myself the time I need to be a blogger and vlogger and achieve all my other small goals and achievements.
Lastly thank you Mumsnet team for giving me this opportunity which I honestly would never have dreamed I would be doing a year ago!
Lovely to meet you in person at the event 🙂 thank you for joining us at #BloggerclubUK x
look forward to meeting you at another event soon xx